SBS 2008 fails miserably when installed in Hyper-V VM?

Hyper-Me

I'm a lil stumped on this one.

I'm trying to put SBS 2008 on a VM on my Hyper-V box. the VM meets the hardware requirements for SBS. I'm not getting any messages or warning me saying the hardware is inadequate. It appears to install fine, I go through all the wizards without issue. When it finishes and reboots I get the attached screenshot, and nothing I do seems to fix it.

I *think* the CA role is failing to install first and causing cascading failure of the rest of the roles (Exchange, TS, TS Gateway)

The setup log shows 2 errors saying CA can not be installed because the component store (ocsetup.exe) has become corrupt.

Any ideas?

EDIT: I checked the SHA1 hash of the ISO and it matches. I was thinking maybe it was corrupt. Im using a SBS 2008 Standard & Premium WITH SP2 ISO from technet. Im now downloading an on SP2 ISO to see if i get anything different.

Hyper-Me

Nobody?

undomiel

I haven't attempted installing a virtual SBS 2008 but from my real world experience I've found all sorts of issues if it doesn't have a connected network connection from dcpromo failing to Exchange not installing. Disconnecting the network during install seems to cause these issues as well. It is a pretty picky bit of software. So first thing I would check is if during the install you have it connected to a network, even if only a private one.

Hyper-Me

undomiel wrote: »

I haven't attempted installing a virtual SBS 2008 but from my real world experience I've found all sorts of issues if it doesn't have a connected network connection from dcpromo failing to Exchange not installing. Disconnecting the network during install seems to cause these issues as well. It is a pretty picky bit of software. So first thing I would check is if during the install you have it connected to a network, even if only a private one.

The first time i had the virtual network attached to the external network. SBS threw a fit that there was another DHCP server on the network, but i dont think that was the root cause. I then attached it to an internal virtual network and i got the same install errors, minus the DHCP one.

I think I have a bad stick of RAM in the box, to be honest. I downloaded a RTM iso and tried that one (was using SP2 ISO at first) and it has even worse install failures.

Hyper-Me

lol @ 62 views and 1 reply.

Guess nobody messes with SBS around here.

earweed

Probably that no one has installed it on Hyper-V. A system that does so much in itself as SBS does seems like it would be difficult to implement with Hyper-V.

Starke

No it's fully supported on Hyper-V and I've done a few installs. Is this a migration or a straight fresh install?

Hyper-Me

Clean install. Not migrating.

Just installing it for some lab purposes, wanting to test some things out. I've never had any weirdness on physical hardware with it, thats why i wondered.

undomiel

Well I can verify that it has been done before, went to a new client today and found SBS2008 running inside of Hyper-V.

earweed

Hyper-Me wrote: »

Nobody?

I figured someone would respond as soon as I said something likeI did. I've only used SBS once and not in a virtual environment. If I had a copy of it I'd try it myself. I can't seem to be able to force myself to get a technet subscription when I don't really need it.

Hyper-Me

Im still suspicious of one of my RAM sticks. I'll report back once i do a little more testing and see if thats it.

SWM

I have also installed it a few times virtually with no issues. but as others have said it is very fussy.

Make sure you do not have a DHCP running on its virtual nic, and it needs to be able to get access to a internet router/gateway ( it wants to check its open port's, but will continue even if it cant change them on its own).

I configurd many SBS 08 servers in my office, using a RRAS server as a dummy intenet gateway, then took the SBS server onto the customer site and then just ran the connect to internet wizard with no problems.

Hyper-Me

Update.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise edition is installed natively on the box. I actually booted it the other day and immediately explorer.exe, MMC.exe, and a couple other things crashed. I rebooted and it came up fine. I took out ALL of the RAM and put it one stick at a time. I booted the box and started a Windows 7 VM so this filled up 80% of the 2GB of RAM available. No crashes, no errors, no problems. Put the RAM all back in and when I go to install SBS 2008 again, it crashes just after i click the "do not go online for updates" option. I used to get much further than this, now this is a far as I can go.

I did a chkdsk on the drive and it reports no errors. I would have to keep suspecting RAM, but i can't get it to act up unless there is 3 or 4 out of the 4 sticks in the machine. The motherboard was replaced under warranty on this machine several months ago because it would constantly freeze. It doesn't freeze anymore, but im getting these random errors.

WTF?

SWM

Dumb question, but have you updated all the hardware manufacturer drivers for the host, rather than using the Microsoft drivers.
I have had issues with both Raid and nic drivers giving wierd errors, especially as you are creating virtual hard disks and virtual NIC's.

Another thing to try, is to just conect a plain workstation SATA hard drive in the server and install the host onto it rather than using a raid card and SAS drives etc.

Hyper-Me

Not sure what I did but i finally got a good install. Maybe the RAM needed to be reseated, dunno.

I was getting a virtual storage driver error in the event log, and I figured out it was caused by the VM having a SCSI adapter attached (even though no drives were on it). I didnt add it, which means R2 adds it by default (strange).

Hyper-Me

Finally figured it out.

For some reason, Hyper-V R2 automatically added a SCSI adapter to my VM when I created it. I was getting strange errors in the System log on the host about "storvsp" and it said something about an unsupported storage configuration, but I was using an IDE drive for the OS on the VM. It was also weird because SBS is said to be compatible withi Hyper-V (and being 2008, has integration services already installed)

Au contraire, SBS 2008 has the integration services for Hyper-V Release 1 already installed....which totally didnt work with any synthetic or SCSI devices and actually caused so much instibility i couldnt even install SBS properly until all synthetic and SCSI devices (AND the SCSI adapter) were removed from the VM.

I installed the NEW integration services, added a SCSI adapter back and attached a VHD (to setup the backup in SBS) and everything is working great.

Oh, also a little "aside". Don't ever turn off IPv6 on SBS...it will make it churn at "Applying Computer Settings" for over an hour before it lets you log on.

Mojo_666

SBS2008 Runs perfectly on my ESX Server....for what it's worth.

Hyper-Me

Mojo_666 wrote: »

SBS2008 Runs perfectly on my ESX Server....for what it's worth.

It runs fantastic on my Hyper-V box now that I figured out what was going on.

Sure, the VM creation wizard automatically tossing a SCSI adapter on there is a slight niggle...but now that I know, thats half the battle!

Mojo_666

Hyper-Me wrote: »

It runs fantastic on my Hyper-V box now that I figured out what was going on.

Sure, the VM creation wizard automatically tossing a SCSI adapter on there is a slight niggle...but now that I know, thats half the battle!

But it's just not Vmware!

Hyper-Me

I'd actually like a little more hands on with ESX, but first I need to get a NIC that it supports. ESX doesn't like my onboard one very much